Alice waters

If
you love cookbooks as much as I do, you’re always looking for more to add to
your (already abundant) collection. As we enter into winter, I’ve rounded up a
few of the most exciting cookbooks from the season, which I’ve been cooking
from (and just reading) all fall and all of which I’m super happy to add to my
shelves.

After a long winter, it was finally time to make maple syrup—otherwise known as "sugaring". So on a strangely warm Thursday, my friend and I jumped into our car and drove north and then east to my family's cabin near Hayward, Wisconsin. This year did not look too promising with the weather being so balmy and not getting below freezing at night, even in northern Wisconsin...but hey, you never know.

A few minutes drive from our cabin is the Sugarbush, 60 acres of beautiful, thickly wooded land where we tap 35 maple trees. It is a small, family operation but has definitely come a long way through the years. It hasn't necessarily grown but over time, it has become more functional, with the exception of the old logging road that goes onto our land. It is too over-grown to really be considered a road so we park and walk the half mile to where we tap the trees.

A
wise chef once told me to never cook a dish for the first time to serve it to others. Make the meal for yourself first to ensure the meal's
delectability. Good point. For me, there is nothing better than the smile
and happiness that comes from other people enjoying and savoring a tasty, nutritious
dish that I provided. This is a true sense of accomplishment - especially when
the good food is good for you.

Fall
is a time of abundance and variety. Fruitful harvests across the state make for a
colorful table and produce aisles with plenty of variation to choose from. Since
we are on the heels of potluck season, I see no reason for anyone to focus
primarily on the staple side dishes of one's holiday kitchen but tis' the season to try
new recipes and ingredients to bring something new to a friend's table on the
needed occasions.

There isn’t much more I would rather do on a crisp, fall day in Madison than visit the Downtown Farmer’s Market. With a sea of proud Madisonites dressed in badger gear foraging for the week’s local food offerings, chocolate-faced kids enjoying their morning treats, and the sun shining strong, I couldn’t help but spend hours meandering the market last week. However, I had more on my “to-do” list than shop for my fill of seasonal veg on that Saturday. It was REAP’s annual Food for Thought Festival on the Square, one of the best fall food events for passionate locavores, if you ask me.

UPDATE: Congratulations to our winner, Marie Pidde! We hope you had fun.

The weather in the Twin Cities today is forecasted to be sunny and warm. Fine. Spend your morning outside doing whatever it is you're compelled to do on a beautiful Sunday in April, but save the afternoon for us: your friends at Simple, Good and Tasty.

We're going to be at the Eden Prairie Community Center for the Eat Local Eden Prairie Fair and we'd love to see you. We'll be doing a coloring contest for the kids, selling Local Food Lover cards to the grown-ups, and extolling the virtues of local food to anyone who stops by. And in case you need an additional incentive to spend an hour or two indoors with us, we're giving away two tickets to see Anthony Bourdain when he comes to the Minneapolis this Friday.

About 40 years ago, on April Fool’s Day, I secretly dumped all the white sugar out of my mother’s sugar bowl and filled it with salt. When she poured her first cup of coffee that morning, and added her spoonful of “sugar,” she tasted, for the first time, her daughter’s love of practical jokes.

I wanted to play a joke on all of you today, too, to commemorate that one date every year when we are encouraged to lighten up and not take everything so seriously. But I don’t have legal access to your sugar bowls -- and even if I did, what are the chances that you, my fellow “eat-real-food” aficionados, would have them filled with white, processed sugar?

So my April Fool’s joke for you is a collection of five food-related stories that sound preposterous enough to be fake.

But only one is. The rest, believe it or not, are true -- to the best of my knowledge.

Alice Waters Photo Courtesy of Chezpanisse.comHere's a terrific opportunity to eat magically delicious local, organic food, prepared by some of the world's greatest chefs in support of a great cause. If only I had $500 and lived in Washington D.C.! But maybe you do? Check out the recent press release I received from the good folks at Chez Panisse:

First, there was Fresh. Then, Food, Inc. Now, the latest food documentary that begins with the letter F gets its own Minneapolis screening tomorrow night.

Food Fight approaches the local-food movement from the perspective of a chef, acknowledging that food is, above all, “a sensual experience.” Fittingly, it prominently features the chefs, like local-food icon Alice Waters, who were among the first to claim that the best-tasting food comes from the healthiest, most sustainable sources. Or, as nutritionist Marion Nestle exclaims on camera, “Who would ever have guessed that the taste of vegetables would turn out to be the start of a revolution?”

As a kid, I spent countless hours, days, weeks, months - heck, even years - thinking of nothing but baseball. With 2 brothers and 3 step-brothers in my family hanging around each summer, it was easy to get a game going any time, and each night was spent in front of the TV, watching our beloved Yankees (I'm from New York) attempt to destroy the competition. My brothers and I developed special cheers for Don Mattingly, Ricky Henderson, Dave Righetti, and the rest of the team. When I moved to Minnesota, I helped my family adjust to the idea by telling them that Dave Winfield was born in St. Paul.

You might think, on the heels of the recent Minneapolis debut of the documentaries "Fresh" by ana Sofia joanes, and "Food Inc," (expertly reviewed by Kristen at Food Renegade this week), that we've had our fill of food at the cinema this summer. Even James Bond only releases one movie each year, right? Wrong! Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the most intelligent movie-going summer in recorded history.